One of the concepts that Ken Blanchard explores in "Leading at a Higher Level" is the difference between a driven leader and a called leader. Coming from the faith world, the concept of "calling" is familiar. It's not explored much in the business world. A driven leader is a person who seeks to advance their own cause, their own agenda, and looks to move authority up the ladder. A called leader is one who seeks to serve those around him or her. A called leader seeks to improve the leadership skills of others, moving down the ladder to serve rather than waiting to be served. This is not to say that a called leader does not have passion or ambition. In fact, they are often very passionate about what they're doing and why -- but it's a passion that's redirected away from self-interest to the interest of others. Driven leaders…
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I recently started reading "Leading at a Higher Level" by Ken Blanchard and associates. It's about how to create high-performing organizations. They outline the flow of leadership this way: self-leadership > one-on-one leadership > team leadership > organizational leadership. Here's my quick run-down ... Without self-leadership, the other levels of leadership will break down. Self-leadership is the ability to "practice what you preach." At this level, leaders develop an internal compass that forms the backbone of decisions and actions. While it's possible to assume greater levels of responsibility without self-leadership, it's not sustainable. In positions that require a high level of trust, a leader who lacks an internal compass will not do the things that foster trust and respect. One-on-one leadership is the ability to effectively lead another person towards a specific end or goal. This requires the ability to adapt your leadership style to the needs of the individual. …
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There are a few blogs I track each day from thought leaders in the church, business world, and technology arena. I believe it's important to stay current with the ideas that are influencing and impacting our culture. One of the blogs I regularly track is from Tony Morgan. Tony has served in leadership positions at New Spring Church and Granger Community Church. He posted a note yesterday entitled "Ministry is Messy" and I thought I would share it with you. It's a good reminder to those of us who lead churches about what is important. Here it is ... At the end of Brian’s message today, he invited people to come forward for prayer and anointing. I was one of a number of pastors and elders who were available to pray with folks. The experience impacted me. It reminded me that the people that walk through the doors of our…
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This weekend I'm teaching on part two of our MRS GREN series: Respiration. The idea behind the message is that we need to continually breathe in God to stay spiritually alive. Breathing is vital to life. At this point, you might be thinking, "Ken is so profound. Duhhhh, I already knew that." Of course you did. But we may not make the connection between our physical bodies and our spiritual life. Just as our physical bodies are wired to breath, so are our spiritual bodies. In Genesis 2 we find that when God created man, he "breathed life into him." Ever since then, we have needed God to continually breathe life into us. And we need to continually breathe in God. Unless we develop the spiritually breathe, we will grow stale -- or worse, we will be spiritually dead. Bill Bright, the late founder of Campus Crusade, described the spiritual…
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I've been nursing a headache since yesterday morning. Since about 8:35 yesterday morning. No need to speculate what caused this headache; it was self-inflicted. I was nearing the end of my workout routine and decided to try a new machine. It was an arm curl machine, the kind with a handle attached to a cable. I placed the pin at 150lbs (just seeing if you're still reading) and sat down. Expecting the resistance to be similar to the machine I normally do curls on, I gave the handle a healthy tug. Actually, I yanked it up so fast I never saw it coming. The handle, a long piece of solid metal, smacked me right between the eyes -- where the nose and eyebrows and forehead meet. At first, everything hurt and I couldn't tell if I had broken my nose or not. For a few moments my vision went blurry…
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